I just canceled my youtube premium account after about 7 years of constant membership.

The recent price increase was crap. The service I receive hasn’t improved - actually with their shitty compression even on “4k” videos my enjoyment has really decreased.

But, the big driver were ads. With premium I didn’t see ads, instead I was increasingly bombarded with “words from our sponsor” all over videos.

Anyway, I recommend freetube. For now at least, it actually blocks all ads including sponsor blocks.

I won’t pay a monthly fee to be google’s advertising product.

I’m disappointed to only now discover this content exists and has been absent from my life so far.

Congrats on making the change!

One piece of gaming software I have not seen mentions yet that I really like is Lutris. It is a unified launcher (steam, gog, epic…) that really helps to keep game installations organized and also helps to manage wine prefixes. I recommend checking it out.

When you first switch you might feel overwhelmed because you’ll have to develop a sense of how things work in a non-Windows world. But, after a bit you’ll realize you feel in control of your computer, maybe for the first time ever. It may seem like a small thing, but the realization that I finally “own” my computer and control the software that is installed on it, how it runs, what programs do what tasks, etc… was really surprising and made everything worth while.

As for switching, I had been exploring the idea. One night while writing an important work email on my Windows 11 pc in outlook (also work required) my pc just randomly shut itself off and, of course, outlook did not save the email draft. Deleted the windows virus the next day and my pc has worked much better ever sense.

If you make the switch you’ll be able to find lots of great help with technical issues online in places like this.

“Wants to become a full paranoid but fears the slippery slope.”

I feel personally attacked yet fully approve this characterization.